We are living in algorithmic times. From machine learning and artificial intelligence to blockchain or simpler newsfeed filtering, automated systems can transform the social world in ways that are just starting to be imagined. Redefining these emergent technologies as the new systems of knowing, pioneering scholar David Beer examines the acute tensions they create and how they are changing what is known and what is knowable. Drawing on cases ranging from the art market and the smart home, through to financial tech, AI patents and neural networks, he develops key concepts for understanding the framing, envisioning and implementation of algorithms. This book will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with the rise of algorithmic thinking and the way it permeates society.

We are living in algorithmic times. From machine learning and artificial intelligence to blockchain or simpler newsfeed filtering, automated systems can transform the social world in ways that are just starting to be imagined. Redefining these emergent technologies as the new systems of knowing, pioneering scholar David Beer examines the acute tensions they create and how they are changing what is known and what is knowable. Drawing on cases ranging from the art market and the smart home, through to financial tech, AI patents and neural networks, he develops key concepts for understanding the framing, envisioning and implementation of algorithms. This book will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with the rise of algorithmic thinking and the way it permeates society.

The vast circulations of mobile devices, sensors and data mean that the social world is now defined by a complex interweaving of human and machine agency. Key to this is the growing power of algorithms - the decision-making parts of code - in our software dense and data rich environments. Algorithms can shape how we are retreated, what we know, who we connect with and what we encounter, and they present us with some important questions about how society operates and how we understand it. This book offers a series of concepts, approaches and ideas for understanding the relations between algorithms and power. Each chapter provides a unique perspective on the integration of algorithms into the social world. As such, this book directly tackles some of the most important questions facing the social sciences today. This book was originally published as a special issue of Information, Communication & Society.

Social media platforms hold vast amounts of biographical data about our lives. They repackage our past content as 'memories' and deliver them back to us. But how does that change the way we remember? Drawing on original qualitative research as well as industry documents and reports, this book critically explores the process behind this new form of memory making. In asking how social media are beginning to change the way we remember, it will be essential reading for scholars and students who are interested in understanding the algorithmically defined spaces of our lives.

Volume I: Texts from Hakluyt's Principall Navigations (1589), together with the items added by him in 1600 and much additional material, a few documents in summary form. This volume takes the narrative to January 1586/7 and includes a descriptive list of John White's drawings of the first colony; the narrative is continued to 1590 and later in the following volume, with which the main pagination is continuous. Volume II: Texts from Hakluyt's Principall Navigations (1589), together with the items added by him in 1600 and much additional material, a few documents in summary form. This volume takes the narrative from January 1586/7 to 1590 and later. Appended is an article on the language of the Carolina Algonkian tribes by James A. Geary, with a word-list; a chapter on the archaeology of the Roanoke settlements; a detailed account of the MS and printed sources; and a map of Ralegh's Virginia This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volumes first published in 1955.

Texts from Hakluyt's Principall Navigations (1589), together with the items added by him in 1600 and much additional material, a few documents in summary form. This volume follows on from Second Series 194, with a continuous main pagination, taking the narrative from January 1586/7 to 1590 and later. Appended is an article on the language of the Carolina Algonkian tribes by James A. Geary, with a word-list; a chapter on the archaeology of the Roanoke settlements; and a detailed account of the MS and printed sources. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1955. Owing to technical constraints the map of Raleigh's Virginia, 1584-90 which appeared in the original edition of the book is not included.

Texts from Hakluyt's Principall Navigations (1589), together with the items added by him in 1600 and much additional material, a few documents in summary form. This volume takes the narrative to January 1586/7 and includes a descriptive list of John White's drawings of the first colony; the narrative is continued to 1590 and later in the following volume (Second Series 105), with which the main pagination is continuous. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1955.

A collection of documents, chiefly from English sources, including a few relating to Ireland, edited with introduction and notes. The main pagination of this and the following volume (Second Series 84) is continuous. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1940.

Follows on from Second Series 83, with continuous main pagination. Includes documents relating to the Munster plantation scheme, 1569, and the Knollys piracy, 1579. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1940. Owing to technical constraints it has not been possible to reproduce the "Map of Narragansett Bay and surroundings, showing landassigned to the Peekhams in 1583" and "Sir Humfiay Gylbert Knight his charts" which appeared in the first edition of the work.

This book examines the powerful and intensifying role that metrics play in ordering and shaping our everyday lives. Focusing upon the interconnections between measurement, circulation and possibility, the author explores the interwoven relations between power and metrics. He draws upon a wide-range of interdisciplinary resources to place these metrics within their broader historical, political and social contexts. More specifically, he illuminates the various ways that metrics implicate our lives - from our work, to our consumption and our leisure, through to our bodily routines and the financial and organisational structures that surround us. Unravelling the power dynamics that underpin and reside within the so-called big data revolution, he develops the central concept of Metric Power along with a set of conceptual resources for thinking critically about the powerful role played by metrics in the social world today.

This book examines the powerful and intensifying role that metrics play in ordering and shaping our everyday lives. Focusing upon the interconnections between measurement, circulation and possibility, the author explores the interwoven relations between power and metrics. He draws upon a wide-range of interdisciplinary resources to place these metrics within their broader historical, political and social contexts. More specifically, he illuminates the various ways that metrics implicate our lives - from our work, to our consumption and our leisure, through to our bodily routines and the financial and organisational structures that surround us. Unravelling the power dynamics that underpin and reside within the so-called big data revolution, he develops the central concept of Metric Power along with a set of conceptual resources for thinking critically about the powerful role played by metrics in the social world today.

Quinn's study brings together the results of his nearly fifty years of research on the voyages outfitted by Sir Walter Raleigh and the efforts to colonize Roanoke Island. It is a fascinating book, rich in details of the colonists' experiences in the New World. Quinn ""solves"" the mystery of the Lost Colony with the controversial conclusion that many of the colonists lived with the Powhatans until the first decade of the seventeenth century when they were massacred. |Establishes the distinctive and influential role of small towns as an important component in the shaping of antebellum southern culture. Based on documentary materials from middle Tennessee.

The culture we consume is increasingly delivered to us via various digital on-demand platforms. The last decade has seen platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Google and the like become massive players in shaping cultural consumption. But how can we understand culture once it moves on to big tech platforms? How can we make sense of the changes this brings to our lives? These platforms have the power to shape our cultural landscape and to use data, algorithms and other technological means to shape our experiences, from what we remember through to what we know and even the speed and accessibility of culture. This book asks how can we understand the chaos and messiness of on-demand culture? Beer suggests that we focus on the quirks and use these as openings to see inside patterns and dynamics of these new cultural formations. By exploring the strange quirks that typify our new on-demand culture, this book seeks to answer these questions. The Quirks of Digital Culture is a guide to understanding the complex and unsettling cultural present, whilst also casting an eye on how our consumption and cultural experiences may unfold in what seems like an unpredictable future.

A significant new way of understanding contemporary capitalism is to understand the intensification and spread of data analytics. This text is about the powerful promises and visions that have led to the expansion of data analytics and data-led forms of social ordering. It is centrally concerned with examining the types of knowledge associated with data analytics and shows that how these analytics are envisioned is central to the emergence and prominence of data at various scales of social life. This text aims to understand the powerful role of the data analytics industry and how this industry facilitates the spread and intensification of data-led processes. As such, The Data Gaze is concerned with understanding how data-led, data-driven and data-reliant forms of capitalism pervade organisational and everyday life. Using a clear theoretical approach derived from Foucault and critical data studies, the text develops the concept of the data gaze and shows how powerful and persuasive it is. It's an essential and subversive guide to data analytics and data capitalism.

The vast circulations of mobile devices, sensors and data mean that the social world is now defined by a complex interweaving of human and machine agency. Key to this is the growing power of algorithms - the decision-making parts of code - in our software dense and data rich environments. Algorithms can shape how we are retreated, what we know, who we connect with and what we encounter, and they present us with some important questions about how society operates and how we understand it. This book offers a series of concepts, approaches and ideas for understanding the relations between algorithms and power. Each chapter provides a unique perspective on the integration of algorithms into the social world. As such, this book directly tackles some of the most important questions facing the social sciences today. This book was originally published as a special issue of Information, Communication & Society.

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel's ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel's lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel's ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel's lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

A significant new way of understanding contemporary capitalism is to understand the intensification and spread of data analytics. This text is about the powerful promises and visions that have led to the expansion of data analytics and data-led forms of social ordering. It is centrally concerned with examining the types of knowledge associated with data analytics and shows that how these analytics are envisioned is central to the emergence and prominence of data at various scales of social life. This text aims to understand the powerful role of the data analytics industry and how this industry facilitates the spread and intensification of data-led processes. As such, The Data Gaze is concerned with understanding how data-led, data-driven and data-reliant forms of capitalism pervade organisational and everyday life. Using a clear theoretical approach derived from Foucault and critical data studies, the text develops the concept of the data gaze and shows how powerful and persuasive it is. It's an essential and subversive guide to data analytics and data capitalism.